“The future belongs to them,” proclaimed María Corina Machado in Oslo. Today, from Oslo, the promise was stated with a borrowed but firm voice: Venezuela will breathe again. It was elevated. Above all, it was a hymn to return. To grandmothers returning to tell stories, to children crossing borders in reverse, to streets vibrating again with laughter and not with echoes of repression. A story where freedom is not a historical souvenir, but a muscle that must be exercised every day. The prize was not for her, Machado insisted. It was for those who stayed, for those who left, and for those who will one day cross the border with light clothing and a heavy heart. The recognition was also dedicated to the anonymous protagonists of the resistance: “To the millions of anonymous Venezuelans who risked their homes, their families, and their lives out of love.” In Oslo, under cold lights and cameras that seemed to hold their breath, María Corina Machado’s daughter lifted the Nobel Peace Prize, while an entire audience listened to a speech that spoke not only of politics, but of home, absence, and return. “Soon, the world will witness the return of our own to their homes, and I will be there,” said the opposition leader, her words read by her daughter, as if casting a promise to the wind, hoping it would arrive intact in Venezuela. It was a solemn ceremony, but not distant. There was a held breath in every phrase, an entire country in every name and every figure. Machado narrated the story of a people that resisted in lines, forced silences, and goodbyes at airports. She remembered a Venezuela that opened its arms to Italians, Jews, Portuguese, and exiles from around the world, and contrasted that past of open doors with the present of broken borders and separated families. That same love from which peace is born, the one that sustained us when all seemed lost, and that today unites and guides us toward freedom. And she promises to be there when that happens. The honor belongs to them. She spoke of imprisoned children, of mothers waiting for news, of grandparents who no longer recognize the sound of a full house. At the ceremony, the Norwegian Nobel Committee did not mince words: it accused the regime of Nicolás Maduro of sustaining itself with the backing of Cuba, Russia, China, Iran, and Hezbollah, denouncing torture, repression, and the social collapse that expelled millions. This day belongs to them. The word “dictatorship” fell dry, direct, without makeup. Machado remembered the night that changed everything: the elections of July 28, 2024, when—according to her claim—Edmundo González won with 67% of the vote, in a country where every ballot became an act of resistance. Then came the fear: more than two thousand detainees, tortured teenagers, women turned into bargaining chips in prisons that should never have existed. Even so, the speech did not remain in the pain.
